MLB Discussion - 2012 Season

The Red Sox are sending Mike Aviles to Toronto as compensation for hiring John Farrell.

God, stupid Red Sox are so much more fun than smart Red Sox. I love the utter madness of trading labor for management. (The Lou Piniella / Randy Winn thing from a few years back was the greatest thing ever.)

The Red Sox are sending Mike Aviles to Toronto as compensation for hiring John Farrell.

God, stupid Red Sox are so much more fun than smart Red Sox. I love the utter madness of trading labor for management. (The Lou Piniella / Randy Winn thing from a few years back was the greatest thing ever.)

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Well the Cubs traded for Theo technically, so how is this different? Would you rather have Theo, or (not the) Chris Carpenter?

If Farrell is the guy they think should be the head of this team during its rebuild, then why should someone like Mike Aviles get in the way of that? He's not irreplaceable in any way. You may not like the whole compensation thing, but how can you say they're stupid, if that's how the system works?

If the Red Sox are bad next year, because of the lack of Mike Aviles, then they have bigger problems to worry about.

Well the Cubs traded for Theo technically, so how is this different? Would you rather have Theo, or (not the) Chris Carpenter?

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The president of baseball operations has a hell of a lot more impact on the team than the field manager, and it speaks to Cherington's incompetence that the only thing they got for Theo was Chris Carpenter the Lesser.

The manager's impact on a team's wins and losses is hugely overrated (see: Art Howe being fundamentally retarded yet the A's coming out of nowhere in 2002). Generally speaking, a team with shitty players will be bad, and a team with good players will be good. Aviles can swing a bat and field balls, so he is infinitely more useful than a goddamn manager. Considering that the problems with the Red Sox organization go far, far deeper than the guy in the manager's office, and that managers are essentially as fungible as relievers, trading labor for a field manager (one who isn't even that good at most things) is the height of idiocy, and it fills me with glee to see the Red Sox continue this run of ineptitude. I knock on AA quite a bit, but receiving a real, live baseball player for a manager is a nice move on his part.

If the Red Sox are bad next year, because of the lack of Mike Aviles, then they have bigger problems to worry about.

Well the Cubs traded for Theo technically, so how is this different? Would you rather have Theo, or (not the) Chris Carpenter?

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The president of baseball operations has a hell of a lot more impact on the team than the field manager. The manager's impact on a team's wins and losses is hugely overrated (see: Art Howe being fundamentally retarded yet the A's coming out of nowhere in 2002). Generally speaking, a team with shitty players will be bad, and a team with good players will be good. Aviles can swing a bat and field balls, so he is infinitely more useful than a goddamn manager. Considering that the problems with the Red Sox organization go far, far deeper than the guy in the manager's office, and that managers are essentially as fungible as relievers, trading labor for a field manager (one who isn't even that good at most things) is the height of idiocy, and it fills me with glee to see the Red Sox continue this run of ineptitude. I knock on AA quite a bit, but receiving a real, live baseball player for a manager is a nice move on his part.

If the Red Sox are bad next year, because of the lack of Mike Aviles, then they have bigger problems to worry about.

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Oh, they've had bigger problems to worry about for a few years, now.

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I agree with you about a lot of this actually. I mean I get that Theo was brought in to rebuild the whole organization, not just to manage the team, but if that is the case, shouldn't the Red Sox have gotten an even better compensation package for him?

I also agree that team has been dysfunctional, from Sept 2011, to Theo leaving, and subsequent compensation terms, to Bobby V, to Lucky poking his head into baseball ops. However, can't they get a little credit for beginning to turn it around? They recognized that they weren't going to get better, dumped almost all of the major contracts that had hamstrung them from retooling the roster (with the help of Dodgers front office) to canning Bobby V. And now they were able to go and quickly execute a trade for a guy who many in the organization (even when Theo was there), had ID'd as Tito's successor, and someone who they wanted to have manage. If they had done something outrageous and traded Rubby de LaRosa, Buchholz or any of their top prospects for Farrell, I'd agree with you, but for Mike Freaking Aviles I just can't get upset over that.

Now they're in the position to have a rebuild (with a admittedly weaker roster to start with). They have a manager who they know communicates well with upper management, who knows their goals and philosophy, and they have MASSIVE payroll flexibility. I feel like the line Jonah Hill has in Moneyball sums it up great. "I think it's a good thing that you got Damon off your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities." They were in a mess, they somehow were able to hit a massive reset button, and now the challenge is that they need to rebuild this thing correctly.

I agree with you about a lot of this actually. I mean I get that Theo was brought in to rebuild the whole organization, not just to manage the team, but if that is the case, shouldn't the Red Sox have gotten an even better compensation package for him?

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Absolutely, and it speaks to the incompetence of the front office that the return was so pathetic. They somehow got less for Theo than the White Sox did for Ozzie.

However, can't they get a little credit for beginning to turn it around? They recognized that they weren't going to get better, dumped almost all of the major contracts that had hamstrung them from retooling the roster (with the help of Dodgers front office) to canning Bobby V. And now they were able to go and quickly execute a trade for a guy who many in the organization (even when Theo was there), had ID'd as Tito's successor, and someone who they wanted to have manage. If they had done something outrageous and traded Rubby de LaRosa, Buchholz or any of their top prospects for Farrell, I'd agree with you, but for Mike Freaking Aviles I just can't get upset over that.

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See, I don't think they're turning it around. While it was good to dump Crawford, I'm not sold on dumping Gonzalez, the Youkilis trade was moronic for several reasons, and they've moved heaven and earth to make roster space for Jose Iglesias, who for all his defensive talent is still the worst hitter in professional baseball. In just twelve months, they've gone from a flawed but competitive team to one that has absolutely no chance of being decent for a number of years to come. Beyond the broken organization, trading for a manager is maybe the dumbest thing any professional baseball club could do (that isn't named "hire Dave Littlefield for anything, ever") and trading an everyday player for one is even more laughable. And David Carpenter is not a good pitcher and was going to be dropped from the 40-man if he wasn't traded. All of this turmoil for a manager who didn't exactly light the world on fire in Toronto and employed some ... "interesting" tactics during games.

"It's not like I'm going to hang phones up on anybody who wants to make any overtures about anything," Cashman told O'Connor. "You're talking about realistic stuff and unrealistic stuff. I don't think it's realistic at all for us to be moving forward with anything but Alex Rodriguez at third base.

"He's still an above-average third baseman. ... That means despite the contract that we had committed to him, that he's an asset at this stage still. I don't see us doing anything there. I don't anticipate it. If someone wants to make phone calls, we're more than willing to do all that stuff with any of our players, and that's fine. You can run into something that way.

Vogelsong brought it this LCS series with two awesome starts. Great win for the Giants tonight and looking forward to Game 7 tomorrow. Of course knowing this, I'll probably get called into work another night shift which will suck.

I've been thinking more about the Red Sox today, and I'm starting to think there might be something more going on beneath the surface, because I'm not sure at all what their strategy is at this point.

They cleared a ton of money off the books in that Dodger trade by giving up Gonzalez to move Crawford; I think it knocks their guaranteed commitments in 2013 from $108 million down to $60 million. This upcoming free agent market is pretty awful in terms of its ability to fill their needs. I'm not all that convinced the Red Sox are going to re-spend all the money they just saved, considering that they continue to nickel-and-dime Ortiz with those one-year deals, which is eventually going to stop, giving the team another $15 - 20 million to spend (or not) in the market.

One could very easily theorize that ownership is getting ready to cash out soon, especially with owning a very costly soccer team which has been losing fistfuls of money as of late.

I'm kind of expecting ownership to cash out sooner than later, too. Recently it was reported that John Henry was looking to bring in a minority owner as some of his non-sports related ventures have been hit pretty hard this year. Could be a precursor to eventually selling the team completely.

As for John Farrell, I think he'll do a good job in Boston (certainly can't do much worse than Valentine), and I'm really glad they didn't waste any time in bringing him in. Now he's got time to put together his own coaching staff (a luxury Bobby V didn't have). I'm not a fan of trading for managers; I think if a manager wants to leave, they should be allowed to. But I didn't think Mike Aviles was going to be around next year anyway, so whatever.

The thing is, though, that a manager's effect upon a team is incredibly overrated. Look at the Texas Rangers: They have done very, very, very well over the last few years, despite Ron Washington being a very, very, very stupid manager. Good players play well, shitty players play, well, shitty, and that's entirely independent of the manager.

Farrell did not display any aptitude for developing young players during his two years in Toronto, and beyond that, pitching coaches rarely do well as managers. I'm kind of excited to see just how deep the Boston blow-up goes.

The manager's effect is overrated, yes, but just having someone there whom both the players and the upper management know and trust is important. Maybe Ron Washington is a strategic dumbass, but if he's successful at the most important part of the job (keeping the clubhouse together), then who cares?

I really don't think things are going to turn out as badly as you're expecting them to.

Lester is happy; he can go back to eating chicken wings and knocking back a few beers in the clubhouse.

This team needed a disciplined teacher and that's not what they got in Farrell. His two years in Toronto, though the last one marred by injuries, were less than spectacular. Nice guy, but you knew he was checked out when the Escobar gay slur came up and he responded to it as if he had got a parking ticket.

As for the Jays, I hope they bring in someone like about disciplined teacher. We have young talent that lacks leadership and someone that could harness that skill and teach them how to be level-headed every day players, we could have something here.